Saki Quotes

#1. Every reformation must have its victims. You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return.

Saki

#2. Latimer Springfield was a rather cheerless, oldish young man, who went into politics somewhat in the spirit in which other people might go into half-mourning.

Saki

#3. The English have a proverb, 'Conscience makes cowboys of us all'.

Saki

#4. The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.

Saki

#5. The Government of the day, which from its tendency to be a few hours behind the course of events had been nicknamed the Government of the afternoon, was obliged to intervene with promptitude and decision.

Saki

#6. But, good gracious, you've got to educate him first. You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school.

Saki

#7. When love is over, how little of love even the lover understands," quoted Clovis to himself.

Saki

#8. To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining nowhere in the evening.

Saki

#9. In the same way, whenever a massacre of Armenians is reported from Asia Minor, every one assumes that it has been carried out "under orders" from somewhere or another, no one seems to think that there are people who might LIKE to kill their neighbours now and then.

Saki

#10. She was one of those who shape their opinions rather readily from the standpoint of those around them.

Saki

#11. This story has no moral. If it points out an evil at any rate it suggests no remedy.

Saki

#12. On all other subjects I believe he is tolerably sane.

Saki

#13. He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.

Saki

#14. The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally.

Saki

#15. If he was trying German irregular verbs on the poor beast," said Clovis, "he deserved all he got.

Saki

#16. I did it - I who should have known better. I persuaded Reginald to go to the McKillops' garden-party against his will.
We all make mistakes occasionally.

Saki

#17. I'm living so far beyond my means that we may almost be said to be living apart.

Saki

#18. The fact of a leading organ of Evangelical thought being edited for two successive fortnights from Trouville and Monte Carlo was generally admitted to have been a mistake.

Saki

#19. When one has nothing left to one but memories, one guards and dusts them with especial care.

Saki

#20. Cats have nine lives, you know," said Sir Wilfrid heartily.
"Possibly," answered Tobermory; "but only one liver.

Saki

#21. I've a sweet temper, but I can't stand being agreed with.

Saki

#22. It was decorated with Japanese fans and Chinese lanterns, which gave it a very Old English effect.

Saki

#23. For he was a god who laid some special stress on the fierce impatient side of things ...

Saki

#24. Publishers always clamour for the books that no one has ever written, and turn a cold shoulder on them as soon as they're written. If St Paul were living now they would pester him to write an Epistle to the Esquimaux, but no London publisher would dream of reading his Epistle to the Ephesians.

Saki

#25. And the vagueness of his alarm added to its terrors; when once you have taken the Impossible into your calculations its possibilities become practically limitless.

Saki

#26. And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of his threatened idol:
Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

Saki

#27. Never," wrote Reginald to his most darling friend, "be a pioneer. It's the Early Christian that gets the fattest lion.

Saki

#28. It was the happiest Christmas Eve he had ever spent. To quote his own words, he had a rotten Christmas.

Saki

#29. Clovis believed that if a lie was worth telling it was worth telling well.

Saki

#30. It follows that they never understood Reginald, who came down late to breakfast, and nibbled toast, and said disrespectful things about the universe. The family ate porridge, and believed in everything, even the weather forecast.

Saki

#31. There is no easy in the world neither hard everything is the same in a way.

Saki

#32. The dear Archdeacon is getting so absent-minded. He read a list of box-holders for the opera as the First Lesson the other Sunday, instead of the families and lots of the tribes of Israel that entered Canaan. Fortunately no one noticed the mistake.

Saki

#33. You ought not to joke about such things. There really are such people. I've known people who've met them. To think of all the adorable things there are to eat in the world, and then to go through life munching sawdust and being proud of it.

Saki

#34. Romance at short notice was her specialty.

Saki

#35. if you don't find a loyal one in the world you be the one

Saki

#36. Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.

Saki

#37. I think she might at least have waited till the funeral was over,' said Amanda in a scandalized voice.
'It's her own funeral, you know,' said Sir Lulworth; 'it's a nice point in etiquette how far one ought to show respect to one's own mortal remains.' ("Laura")

Saki

#38. Behind his careful political flippancy and cynicism one might also detect a certain careless sincerity, which would probably in the long run save him from moderate success, and turn him into one of the brilliant failures of his day.

Saki

#39. Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people.

Saki

#40. The grill-room clock struck eleven with the respectful unobtrusiveness of one whose mission in life is to be ignored.

Saki

#41. He nurse the illusion that he is one of the lost arms of the Venus de Milo, and hopes that the French Government may be persuaded to buy him.

Saki

#42. To say that anything was a quotation was an excellent method, in Eleanor's eyes, for withdrawing it from discussion,

Saki

#43. One can discourage too much history in one's family, but one cannot always prevent geography.

Saki

#44. She looks as if she might have created the world in six days and destroyed it on the seventh.

Saki

#45. With us," said Reginald, "a Cabinet usually gets the credit of being depraved and worthless beyond the bounds of human conception by the time it has been in office about four years.

Saki

#46. A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.

Saki

#47. I hate posterity - it's so fond of having the last word.

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#48. Addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts.

Saki

#49. The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, she went.

Saki

#50. Neither man was talkative and each was grateful to the other for not being talkative. That is why from time to time they talked.

Saki

#51. In baiting a mousetrap with cheese, always leave room for the mouse.

Saki

#52. I regard one's hair as I regard husbands: as long as one is seen together in public one's private divergences don't matter.

Saki

#53. Laurence was an artist-chap, just that and nothing more, though you might make it sound more important by calling him an animal painter;

Saki

#54. Pluralism is a merciful narcotic.

Saki

#55. The censorious said she slept in a hammock and understood Yeats's poems, but her family denied both stories.

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#56. Even the hooligan was probably invented in China centuries before we thought of him.

Saki

#57. Confront a child, a puppy, and a kitten with a sudden danger; the child will turn instinctively for assistance, the puppy will grovel in abject submission, the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance.

Saki